Tuning the corticospinal system - How distributed brain circuits shape our actions
(2020) The Neuroscientist : reviews at the interface of basic and clinical neurosciences — Vol. 46, n° 4, p. 359-379 (2020)
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- Interactive behaviors rely on the operation of several processes allowing the control of actions, including their selection, withholding and abortion. The corticospinal tract provides a unique route through which brain circuits can exert such control over bodily motor acts. In humans, the activity of the corticospinal tract can be probed through the quantification of motor-evoked potentials, which can be elicited in targeted effectors by applying single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the contralateral primary motor cortex. Using this approach, a compendium of studies has shown that the corticospinal tract exhibits dynamic increases and decreases in excitability during action selection, withholding and stopping, reflecting the implementation of the underlying control processes at the motor level. In this review, we highlight neural data from TMS studies revealing the causal role played by multiple intra-cortical, trans-cortical and subcortico-cortical circuits in these changes in corticospinal excitability. An emerging picture is that these distributed circuits cooperate through a parallel brain architecture to tune corticospinal excitability in a continuous and dynamic way, helping to determine what, when and whether actions must be executed, depending on the state of the external world.
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Derosiere, G., & Duque, J. (2020). Tuning the corticospinal system - How distributed brain circuits shape our actions. The Neuroscientist : reviews at the interface of basic and clinical neurosciences, 46(4), 359-379. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073858419896751 (Original work published 2020)